— Paolo Uccello (1397 – 1475).
By viewing Nature,
Nature’s handmaid Art,
Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow
— John Dryden (1631 – 1700).
If computer art has
a future as an art form in its own right, it is to be found in the dynamic, the
animated, the interactive. It should look not towards Rembrandt, but towards Verdi’s
‘Aïda’. Not just the classical ‘Aïda’, but an ‘Aïda’ with the audience singing along
and scrambling onto the backs of the elephants on stage. Chaos? No. Total theatre.
— Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, Descartes’
Dream, Penguin, 1990, 53.
I can carry out sculpture
in marble, bronze or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done, as
well as any other, be he who he may … And if any of the above-named things seem
to any one to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment
in your park or in whatever place may please your Excellency — to whom I commend
myself with utmost humility.
— Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519), quoted by Bronowski and Mazlish, The Western Intellectual Tradition, pp 9-10.
TEKEL: Thou art weighed
in the balances, and art found wanting.
— Holy Bible, Daniel, 5:27.
More in Seurat than
in Ingres
— D. Q. Bach (1729 – 1648), Quoted by Duncan Bain in Against Contrapuntalism, a manifesto, Breek-Anathema Press, 1990.
Our sight is the most
perfect and delightful of our senses. It fills the mind with the largest variety
of ideas, converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and continues the
longest in action without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments.
— Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719), The Spectator,
411.
‘There is a pleasure
in painting which none but painters know.’ In writing, you have to contend with
the world; in painting you have only to carry on a friendly strife with Nature.
— William Hazlitt (1778 – 1830), On the Pleasure
of Painting.
What happens when
a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all works
of art which preceded it.
— T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965).
The division of our
culture is making us more obtuse than we need be: we can repair communications to
some extent: but, as I have said before, we are not going to turn out men and women
who understand as much of their world as Piero della Francesca did of his, or Pascal,
or Goethe. With good fortune, however, we can educate a large proportion of our
better minds so that they are not ignorant of the imaginative experience, both in
the arts and in science, nor ignorant either of the endowments of applied science,
of the remediable suffering of most of their fellow humans, and of the responsibilities
which, once seen, cannot be denied.
— C. P. Snow (1905 – 1980), The Two Cultures:
a Second Look, 1963.
There is a likeness
between the creative acts of the mind in art and in science. Yet, when a man uses
the word science in such a sentence, it may be suspected that he does not mean what
the headlines mean by science.
— Jacob Bronowski (1908 – 1974), Science and
Human Values, Julian Messner, 1956.
What is the insight
with which the scientist tries to see into nature? Can it indeed be called either
imaginative or creative? To the literary man the question may seem merely silly.
He has been taught that science is a large collection of facts; and if this is true,
then the only seeing which scientists need to do is, he supposes, seeing the facts.
— Jacob Bronowski (1908 – 1974), Science and
Human Values, Julian Messner, 1956.
… if science were
a copy of fact, then every theory would be either right or wrong, and would be so
forever. There would be nothing left for us to say but that this is so or not so.
No one who has read a page by a good critic or a speculative scientist can ever
again think that this barren choice of yes or no is all that the mind offers.
— Jacob Bronowski (1908 – 1974), Science and
Human Values, Julian Messner, 1956.
There should be no
honours for the artist; he has already, in the practice of his art, more than his
share of the rewards of life; the honours are pre-empted for other trades, less
agreeable and perhaps more useful.
— Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894), Letter
to a Young Gentleman.
At one time, the state
of culture in Czechoslovakia was described, rather poignantly, as a ‘Biafra of the
spirit’… I simply do not believe that we have all lain down and died. I see far
more than graves and tombstones around me. I see evidence of this in … expensive
books on astronomy printed in a hundred thousand copies (they would hardly find
that many readers in the USA) …
— Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright (and later president), ‘Six asides about culture’
in Living in Truth, Faber 1989, pp. 124-5.
Science is part of
culture. Culture isn’t only art and music and literature, it’s also understanding
what the world is made of and how it functions. People should know something about
stars, matter and chemistry. People often say that they don’t like chemistry but
we deal with chemistry all the time. People don’t know what heat is, they hardly
know what water is./I’m always surprised how little people know about anything.
I’m puzzled by it.
— Max Perutz, quoted in New Scientist 26 June 1993, 31.
You will find an index to this blog at the foot of this link. Please be patient: I am pedalling as fast as I can.
No comments:
Post a Comment